Saturday, April 05, 2014

Spring Break

Life keeps ticking along at a rapid fire pace. There never seems to be a dull moment around here and the floor always needs to be swept. Always.

This year was our first official spring break. Lou's school/day care remained open (thank goodness), so it was really just Norah that we had to contend with. Bubby picked up some of the slack and I took a little time off as well so that we could squeeze some fun things in.

One of the kids' favorite things to do is play school. Norah is always the teacher and Lou is her wayward student. He gets in trouble a lot.

On one of the days I was home we checked out the new Austin Aquarium. It is just what you might expect from an aquarium in a strip mall. Oh yes. An aquarium in a strip mall. It was quite possibly one of the worst kid attractions I have ever been to. The kids, of course, thought it was the greatest place they had ever been.

That's a miniature alligator behind them.

There were several tanks of sting rays (sans stingers) and you could stick your hands in and pet them. It took Norah about 45 minutes of standing there before she would touch one. Louis tried to climb in the tank.

There was a crappy little indoor play-structure that could support about 10 kids. We were there early so it wasn't a big deal until 100 more kids showed up and overtook it. Lou wised up quickly and got out of there. Norah got stuck in a tunnel with a bunch of jerk-off big kids.

By the time Amy got there with Reid and baby Camilla there were 10,000 more kids, mostly on day care field trips. It was a bit much. The kids, of course, want to go back every day. We will likely go back never.

The big project we wanted to get done over break was to paint Norah's doll house. She got the house for her third birthday, at a time when I still read, researched, and agonized over every single toy purchase. Those were the days. It's made out of some kind of organic wood, hand kissed by fairies. Okay, not really but something along those lines. The idea was that instead of pre-printed graphics or colors, it would be a blank slate for Norah to create whatever she wanted it to be. She hasn't shown much interest until a few months ago when she wanted to color it with markers. I told her we could paint it and it just about blew her mind.

I had a ton of craft paint from various projects so she decided she wanted a rainbow house. She did a great job for about an hour and then got tired and decided it was more fun to be the boss and tell me what to do. BVZ wanted us to finish and not drag it out to a week long project in the middle of the kitchen table, so I let her be the supervisor and I ended up doing the bulk of the actual painting.

All of the ideas are hers but the execution is mine. On the roof and the top floor, one half is day and the other is night. The other floors are a mix of different colors and on the ground floor there is a rainbow and pot of gold. We were both pleased by how it turned out.

The other day I was off, Norah and I spent the morning together at the Zilker botanical gardens. Norah had been there on a school field trip in pre-k, but I had never seen them before. It's no Golden Gate Park, but very enjoyable nonetheless.

Spring time is fairy time and it was the inauguration of the Fairy Trail Walk. Basically, people in the community build fairy houses and they are strategically placed along a path. It's a half hour walk or so and there are probably about 20 houses. The nice thing was that the trail was virtually deserted and so we had the place entirely to ourselves. Norah loves all things magical and so she was the perfect person to share it with.

We picked up Louie and got frozen yogurt. He's wearing a pajama top. He wears his pajama top under his school shirt every day. His thing with his friends is that first thing in the morning they compare pajama tops.

They both got new shoes. Lou's are spider-man and light up. His feet are huge. The ones Norah are wearing went back to the store the next day because they gave her terrible blisters. Both kids have freakishly narrow heels.

That weekend we went to a handful of fun birthday parties. This is the first year Lou has branched out and gotten together with friends of his own. Having an older sister and a cousin the same age basically means I have expended ZERO effort in finding him his own friends. But he now has a handful of kids from school and other places that he really likes and talks about all of the time. He got to go to a pirate party and wore his Jake Halloween costume. It is so short that more than one other parent at the party asked why he was dressed up as Pinocchio. Ha.

We also went to a fun party at the children's museum where the kids got to do a science experiment and made "worms."